● Lukas LY1LB and Haroldas LY5IM visited Vilnius Radvilų gymnasium and spoke about the activities of ham radio and how to become a radio amateur. Presentation about YOTA activities was also made, alongside the project of ARISS contact. The students had a hands on experience with a HF radio which was set up in the classroom. Photos can be found on Lithuanian amateur radio society facebook page. [1].

● Vilnius University club is continuing to grow. As of last month we have a new club member – Lukas LY1PG. The club will begin more HF operations as a new antenna was obtained – we have bought a new 3 element tri-bander yagi for 20/15/10m.

● An animated video about Amateur Radio hobby was released in Lithuanian on one of the most known educational channels in Lithuania [2].

● Amateur Radio Direction Finding has been regularly cultivated with at least one activity a week, every month. All of these ARDF meetings/trainings have been public and announced to a wide audience, frequently bringing new people who might eventually get in the hobby themselves.

● Simonas Kareiva has presented the amateur radio hobby to a large audience on prime-time evening hours of a major radio station “Radiocentras”

● The high-altitude balloon project, Amateur Radio manual are currently pending as per high work and study load to the participants.

PLANS FOR NEXT 2 MONTHS

Continue working with new interested people;

Further work towards LY high altitude amateur radio balloon experiment;

ARDF activities. [3]

LONG-TERM PLANS

Amateur Radio manual site to make it international guide to amateur radio;

On the evening of 17 April, Höerskool Jeugland, a dual medium school in Kempton Park held their annual open day, where prospective grade 8’s come and see what the school has to offer.

On show was the Jeugland Radio club ZR6JRC. Licensed amateurs Cameron (ZS6CYE), Maryna (ZR6MC), Josh (ZU6JOS), Nadia (ZU6NAC) and RAE candidate Waldo took time to explain to the prospective Jeugies what amateur radio is all about and how to join the club and begin having fun.

The catch phrase ‘Your Gateway to a Career in Engineering and Science’ really seemed to catch the eye and there was a lot of interest.

The YOTA Subregional Camp in DL finally took place! In Mid of March 60 Youngsters met and spent a great weekendtogether. A daily report can be found on the website, seehttps://www.ham-yota.com/category/subregional-activities/ . This report will focus on our notes and organizing ideas behind the camp. It was mainly organizied by some former YOTA-Camp participants and voluntary youth workers of the DARC

Since we (the organisors) also wanted to include the international character of ham radio, we apply for a Subregional YOTA Camp and therefore also invited international youngsters. To not scare away German youngsters (e.g. younger ones), who might be afraid of a camp held in English, we decided to keep German as the main language, but with the opportunity to also have all program points in English, at least with an interpretor.

The amount of pupil youngsters in DL is quite high, so had to find a suitable date for them. School holidays aren’t harmonised, depending on where you live, you can have different holiday dates than others. Therefore the camp was just hold on one weekend.

The place for the camp should be the headquarter of the DARC in Baunatal, the accomodation was the Hotel owned by the DARC (we still had to pay for it, but we did get a discount). Due to the most capacity for everyone in the Hotel in Baunatal, the best suitable date was mid of March.

For advertising the event, we used several platforms: This includes promoting the camp on the DARC website, post on the social media accounts of the DARC and YOTA as well as reposting it, writing a general email to all young DARC members, advertising in the CQDL magazine (German ham radio magazine) and also directly contacting youngsters. It actually worked well since the camp was completely full and we also got a high number of participants from Germany itself.
Since we didn‘t like the idea of first come first serve, we decided to first went for a conditional registration, with a final acceptance of participants after the deadline. The idea behind that was mainly to avoid to many big youth groups from e.g. the same local club (since this tend to block a good get-to-know-each-other with everyone). We didn‘t had this szenario, but we had a few to many youngsters so we just used lottery to make a decision who get accepted.

For the programme we just followed two simple ideas: one was to have informative parts, the other was to get youngsters with same interests together. We therefore came to the following schedule:

Each participant should decide on his/her own which workshops he/she wanted to attend. If there was a free time slot, everyone was invited to go to the shack. At any time there was a advisor in the shack, so that also unexperienced youngsters could go there. Another possibility during a free time slot was to go to one of the chill out areas. The idea behind this was that while realxing in on of the beanbags, you can easily talk and get in contact with another youngster next to you. It turned at that this worked pretty well, at the end of the camp everyone has spoken to nearly all other participants and therefore got to know a lot of other hams around his age.

Some workshops where held (spontaniously) several times, since collasions were unaviodable. The workshops were held by the participants themselves. The advantage behind this is to give the more experienced youngsters the opportunity to show their knowledge and on the other hand side to give the others the opportunity to learn from other youngsters, following the motto „youngsters for youngsters“.

Time flew by and soon the camp was over again. However, many have already said to take part in another amateur radio event. We hope and look forward to seeing more youngsters at such events soon.

Anyone is more than welcome to share any comments or questions with us! If you want to contact us directly, feel free to contact us also via ham-yota@darc.de

NOTA, Nordics On The Air, a local IARU R1:s youth camp. In 2018, the first NOTA camp where held in on Hemsön, a small Island in Sweden, something that now have continued on into a larger cooperation between even more countries.

This year the Finnish team was the main organiser of this event, and boy what a fantastic work hey had done! For us in the Swedish team, this camp stared with roadtrips to the ferry over from Stockholm to Turku, with a second roadtripp to the campsite. We did arrive a bit earlier then the others, so we helped our fellow Nordics with the station and antennas.

When all the other participants had arrived to the camp, we had some teambuilding activities and finished the day with an intercultural evening, just like in any regular YOTA-camp. A lot of people to get to know and many different things to try from many different counties.

During the next two days we had the opportunity to listen to interesting presentations, try ARDF, activate a OHFF-station, build fruit-keyers, of-air-contest and most importantly: SAUNA!

In conclusion, the camp was very giving and made it possible to create a lot of new contacts and friends all around Europe.

After the camp we have now slowly started working with the Nordic courtiers for nest years NOTA, and only time will tell how that will work out, but I think it looks good!

Meetings and planning

We have had a lot of meetings with our youth-section in SSA where we both have discussed what we have done and what we want with the rest of the year.

What are we working with right now?

Weekend camp

We are planning a national camp for youngsters combined with older hams to booth exchange knowledge and to keep in contact with our friends all around our long country.

Planning for YOTA

Preparations for the Swedish participation for this yeas YOTA have started, and we are right know looking in to who are going to be participating

That is the status with the Swedish team right now. A fun start of the year, and a lot of fun left to do.

At the beginning of 2019 the Youngsters in Austria were working together on some international YOTA projects, for example the YOTA online shop where you can buy clothes and accessories with YOTA branding. Of course the profits go to support YOTA projects such as the summer camp. Furthermore we were meeting to plan events in the summer months. Most of our plans are for the summer holiday period for 2 reasons. Firstly the weather makes outdoor activities much more enjoyable so it is possible to organise camping trips and field days for example. Furthermore most youngsters are still at school or university so in the holidays they have time and are not worrying about exams and the like. We have some big plans, however we can’t talk about them just yet.

Furthermore some of the youngsters were preparing for future contest operations by acquiring new masts for the contest station oe1w where there are always many youngsters helping out building the station and operating. Another activity which we are preparing and which will happen soon is the expansion of the antenna system in the Austrian club’s headquarter station. A 12 metre Hummel mast and a 4 square will be added to the station soon. Most of the construction, mounting antennas etc. is done by youngsters. It’s always a fun day of working together on such projects. These kind of get togethers are also the perfect opportunity to introduce new youngsters to the community and to show them the kind of fun things that we do.

What are we working with right now?
Right now we are planning the trip to NOTA in april (which we are looking forward to a lot!) while trying to recruit as many people as possible to join. We have also started planning for the autumn events via meeting over skype.

What are our goals?
We continue with the same goals as in the last report. That is to keep regular activities each year as follows:
NOTA
To give the Swedish youth an opportunity to get friends and further get into the hobby. YOTA
For youngsters to develop more fun ideas to bring back home to our activities.
Fall weekend event
A smaller follow up event to meet our NOTA friends in Sweden from the previous NOTA and for the youngsters who did not manage to participate in NOTA.
3 December YOTA events
Lighter, more casual events at three club stations for the youngsters to get active with the exciting DYM-Signal during three entire weekends (fri-sun).

When a youngster who has never before heard of amateur radio asks you what it is, how do you explain it in a few short sentences?
Ham radio is a way to talk with basically anyone anywhere, you only need a radio and an antenna and you are off! And yes, of course there’s internet and mobile phones that makes it possible to talk to anyone in a very simple way, but that is not the point for us. We can compare it with sailing as an example, even though you can take the ferry to Islands such as Gotland, people still sail. Radio is a hobby just like sailing which gives you more control over what you are doing while you can continue to learn even more about it.

Ham exams took place in February. Four students of our course gain courage and managed their Novice class. Another three members of OM3KFF upgraded themselves to Extra class. Now, we will have more time for practice and also we are going to start Morse code lessons.

We also use contests for training of beginners, mainly SSB and RTTY. We did part time easy operation in CQWW SSB, Mexico RTTY, CQ WPX RTTY. CQ 160m SSB, ARRL SSB and CQ WPX SSB are following soon.

I gathered participants for summer YOTA camp in Bulgaria who replied public call. After discussion with youngsters and their parents, we agreed a new team leader (Bety OM1DP).

—

…how do you explain it in a few short sentences?

Amateur radio is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get. 

During the winter we have some interesting contests in OK. So we were sure to take part in them. First was 2m Christmas contest where OL18YOTA made huge success by taking 4th place in Adult Multi category, Martina will tell you more. In February there is 2m/70cm QRP contest. Honza has really adventurous story from this contest. So keep reading.

CHRISTMAS CONTEST 2018

Under a callsign OL18YOTA we took a part in the Christmas contest.
Contest was on 26th December, in two parts from 08.00 – 11.00 and 12.00 – 15.00 UTC.
With the ICOM IC-7600, TR 144 H, PA-800W and 2 x 10 el. Yagi antenna we did 204 QSOs. Best DX was DL1KFS with 838 km. This number of QSOs brought us the 4th place in the Multi category 144MHz. For some of us it was the first time in Christmas contest and also the first longer contest.

Martina OK2YLQ

WINTER QRP CONTEST 2019

One of the best opportunities for real men is the annual Winter QRP contest held every year on 1st Sunday of February. The contest starts at 9:00 UTC and consists of two separate two-hours periods – first on 70 cm and second on 2 m bands. Only 10 W power output is permitted, so the best way how to win the first place (awarded by the little „snowman“ statuette) is participation from the highest hill you can find in your neighborhood. But imagine, that it’s winter time and in Czech republic there is normally about approximately two meters of snow cover in the mountains!

Two teams of youngsters decided to participate this tough event this year – Martina OK2YLQ (17) took part from home and tried to give some points to as many portable stations as possible, and Honza OK1JD (24) made a choice to take part from the Velka Destna hill (1115 m asl) with intention to reach at least one of the first three places in each category. Here is his story:

„Sometimes in December I made a choice to take part in the Winter QRP contest on VHF/UHF. And because I have never participated this competition before, I didn’t realise that portable operation in winter from mountains is not so easy as I imagined. So I decided to visit the highest hill nearby – Velka Destna (asl 1115 m). I persuaded also my friend Martin (he is not a ham) to come with me, because I needed someone to help me with all the necessary equipment – FT-817, batteries, 6 el and 10 el yagis, tent, shovel, and so on.
Our little expedition started at 7 am when we packed the car and in 40 minutes we reached the parking place in 900 m asl, 3,5 km far from the top of the hill. First three kilometers were quite easy. The „road“ went through the forest, so the 80 km/h wind (which we expected according to the weather forecast) was not a problem so far. But the last 200 meters to the top were a real hell – every second step we falled down into the snow cover so deeply, that it was very physically difficult to stand up again, especially with heavy backpacks. Aprx. 30 minutes before contest we started to build the tent and both antennas. In the strong freezing wind it was not so easy and we finally started our CQ´s almost 40 minutes after the beginning of the contest!

Because of bad propagation, short antennas, terrible FT-817 (it is really not a TRX for a real contesting HI), icing and of course because of the lack experiences with this contest (it was our first participation) we reached only 24 QSO´s on 70 cm and 52 QSO´s on 2 m. So the result was a far far away from our expectations (we wanted to manage 40 QSO on 70 cm and minimally 65 QSO on 2 m).

Nevertheless the most important thing than number of QSO´s is the excellent feeling that we managed this hard challenge and even when the nature is against you, you can deal with that and you overcome yourself. Looking forward the W QRP 2020!

Explaining amateur radio in a few sentences can be quite challenging. Here are a few ideas collected from german youngsters:

“We use radios to call out into the whole world, waiting for a response from someone. We don’t care at all about who is coming back, we’re excited about who is answering and where our signal was received. We might even get an answer from countries of which we don’t know much about.”

“It’s comparable with a random chat with someone around the world. But the main point is that we use our own communication system with radios and antennas, so we’re completely independent of the internet, mobile or telephone network.”

“As radio amateurs we deal with a lot of different topics from natural sciences, e.g. satellite radio, contacts through the world with less power or electronic self-building projects.”

A possible counter-question to why we still concern ourselves with amateur radio these days is

“Why is horse-riding still a popular hobby, if there are cars, trains and airplanes?”

Besides all the colloquial explaining, it might be still the best idea to actually show, what ham radio is. A possible way to do so is to introduce it through school or local youth activities, e.g. a small fox hunt, some on-air-activities or a classical introductory course to soldering.
As an example: This was just done by an active radio club (DARC E09 near Hamburg) where they organized some activities for an open-door day in the mid of February at a school in their town.

TrainTheTrainer-report: Update February

We‘re finally looking forward to our Subregional Camp in Baunatal in March! During the last two months we focused on everything concerning the camp.

Besides a lot of organizing points, we also tried to advertise our camp as well as possible, so that nearly every youngster knows about it. This includes: promoting the camp on the DARC website, post on the social media accounts of the DARC and YOTA as well as reposting it, writing a general email to all young DARC members, advertising in the CQDL magazine (German ham radio magazine) and also directly contacting youngsters.

It actually worked well since the camp is completely full and we also got a high number of participants from Germany itself.

Besides the planned activities for all youngsters, we want to use the chance to get to know the German youth and try to figure out, what they think about youngsters in amateur radio and what kind of youth activities they’re interested in. Together with them and depending on all youngsters preferences, we want to find a strategy, how we can improve the youth situation in general.